China tests world’s largest air-raid siren ahead of first official Nanking massacre memorial day
China has been testing the world’s largest – and loudest – air-raid siren in Nanjing ahead of tomorrow’s first official national memorial day to commemorate victims of the Nanking massacre.
State leaders will attend the ceremony, which will honour the 300,000 civilians and soldiers, which China claims were killed by Japanese troops in the city – then the nation’s capital – during six weeks of rape and murder, which began on 13 December, 1937.
The 4.6 tonne red siren, dubbed “The Defender”, has a 2.6-metre-tall, 2.4-metre-wide, and three-metre-long speaker, which can be heard from up to 30km away.
It has to be powered by 157.5 kilowatts of electricity when switched on – 30 times the consumption of an ordinary siren.
The sound of the alarm remains an ear-splitting 130 decibels from 30 metres away from the siren – louder than that of an ambulance’s siren, which is recorded at 120 decibels.
For their own safety operators of the huge siren must use a remote control to operate it, and stand at least 50 metres away.
In the past, one operator experienced a pricking sensation in his thighs after standing only 30 metres away when turning on the siren, the siren’s manufacturers told mainland media.
The giant siren is expected to form part of the nation’s regular air-raid siren system on future memorial days after tomorrow’s commemorations.
The manufacturers, from Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, had volunteered to design and built the siren, mainland media reported.
The company spent nearly 100,000 yuan (about HK$126,000) just to transport the siren by road from its factory in Taizhou to Nanjing.
Every Chinese citizen must remember the catastrophe of the Nanking massacre,” the company told mainland media. “We hope more people can hear the air-raid alarm so they never forget what happened to the city’s victims,”
Since 1996 the sounding of an air-raid siren has been heard across Nanjing on December 13 to commemorate the victims of the massacre carried out by Japanese soldiers.
Various Japanese officials have denied there was any massacre.
In 2012, Takashi Kawamura, the mayor of Nagoya, triggered an outcry in mainland China after telling a visiting delegation from Nanjing that “conventional acts of combat”, and not mass murder and rape, had taken place in the city.
In February, China’s national legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), designated December 13 as a national memorial day for Nanking massacre victims, following proposals from NPC delegates.
